Given For What You Gave
by Dreaming-Of-A-Nightmare
Summary: Things have gone horribly wrong; their transmutation of their mother failed, and now The Gate has appeared, and it wants payment. What will it take? .:. a 'what if' re-write. can be considered pre-Elricest if you want. AU?


**A/N: This is a short, 'what if?' scenario that can be seen as pre-Elricest if desired. Nothing much, though; just a thought. I'm warning you, though: this is full of tragedy/angst, but that's not too different from the original show, now, is it?**

**

* * *

**

_Things have gone horribly wrong._

These are the first words to emerge in young Alphonse Elric's mind as the golden transmutation rays around him turn red, their gentle winds turn violent, and their pure glow turns an irregular purple.

He screams, his voice drowned out by the noise of a failed transmutation. He feels tiny tendrils with fingers grip and claw and scratch at him, dragging him backward towards a large vortex that appeared the second things had gone awry.

"Edward!" he calls out hoarsely, and his older brother lunges for him.

"No, you can't take him away from me!" the older blond is yelling at the top of his lungs amidst the chaos. "I won't let you have him!"

Al doesn't know hat to say, think, or do. He reaches out blindly for his only sibling. Miraculously, he's able to catch hold of his brother's hand, and they go flying together into the vortex, never letting go of the other.

Ten and eleven years old. That's all they are: children.

They land, still clasped hand in hand, onto what feels – but does not visually resemble – solid ground. The brothers have arrived in a desolate place, all yellow-gold and white, with a large, looming doorway poised in front of them, carved from stone.

"The Gate," Edward mutters, his gold eyes cold. "It was mentioned in some of Dad's annotations in the alchemy books. This must be It…"

"The Gate?" Alphonse repeats, his voice but a whisper. He stares into it, his dark gold eyes bulging.

The Doors open up wide, a million hungry, shadowy figures with faces lurking within. All grinning. They have sharp teeth, like sharks or demons. Alphonse cowers behind his brother.

"Wh-what are they, Brother?" he says, his voice wavering with fear. He clenches the back of Ed's shirt tightly. "And what do they want?"

Edward's expression is stony, something unfitting for one so young. He replies lowly, "I think they want payment." He throws a hand out to the side of his small body in one large whipping motion. "Well, take what you want, you vultures! Take it from me, whatever you'd like as equivalent exchange; just don't you _dare_ touch my baby brother!" he shouts fiercely. But Al can feel him trembling.

And so The Gate obeys. It doesn't touch Al; but It removes all It wishes from Ed.

The greedy black figures fly out of The Doors. Molecule by molecule, they tear limbs from Edward's body. His left leg for his mother's body; his right leg for attempting the forbidden; and his right arm for shielding his younger sibling.

The golden blond screams in horror, but not in pain. Alphonse says his name, but the world is growing hazy around him.

The Gate closes with a thud. It's satisfied for now. It releases the two boys, sending them back to their own hell: the room they left that's full of blood and cement and alchemy.

Ed whines, cradling himself with one arm as blood flows freely from his amputated limbs. Al is directly behind him, holding him. Alphonse gazes out across the mess and sees their "mother:" a living, soulless creature with glowing eyes and floating organs and bones that are partially formed. He turns his head in disgust, shuddering and sobbing. He looks down at his big brother, the person he can feel dying a little in his arms from blood loss.

"You have to stay awake, Brother; you can't pass out, or else you might not –" _wake up,_ he had been about to say, but he cuts himself off with a bite to his bottom lip to choke back another sob.

"Al…" Ed murmurs, "Take me to – ung!" he grunts in pain, "– to the Rockbells'. They can… help…"

Whimpering, crying, Alphonse nods his head. He feels like this is entirely his fault. He blinks his eyes, trying to stay strong, as he lifts his brother up off of the floor and onto his back, securing him there. He silently thanks a higher power for making him taller, despite being the younger; it at least enables him to do this.

Time rushes by in a blur. Edward sleeps for three days, restlessly, as Winry and Aunt Pinako bandage the three stumps on the young boy. When awake, Edward requests automail. They don't deny it to him; he can barely move without legs and another arm. He grunts and yells, but does not cry; even as his nerves are being connected to the metal.

"This is nothing," Ed utters gutturally, his voice oddly mature for someone his age. "Not – not compared to what – what I saw." He swallows back bile, his eyes squeezing shut. "In The Gate, there was – were possibilities, truths, other worlds – uhng! – and universes. I saw – I saw Al in a suit of – armor – n-nothing but a s-soul, attached with – hah – alchemy." He growls and pounds his fist on the operating table. "I didn't want to let that happen! Not this t-time."

Through the door, Alphonse hears everything. A suit of armor, an attached soul? No body, no mind, no heart? Only a soul…

If Ed hadn't bargained with The Gate, hadn't gone with Al at all… would that have happened instead? And what of Ed? Would he still end up losing limbs, but perhaps less of them?

Mind reeling, Alphonse clenches his hands into fists and shuts his leaking eyes. He flees. He runs headlong out the front door of the Rockbell house, the wood banging behind him. He collides with a tree and clings to it, hugging its trunk tightly, breaking down into heavy weeping.

"I… I can't let Ed go through all of this, carrying the burden of failing to bring back Mom all by himself! I have to do something…" he mumbles through his tears, "Because I'm just as guilty as he is. Aren't I?"

His eyes fly open a moment later as an idea strikes him; there is _one_ thing that he can do to lessen the burden….

Acting quickly, while Ed is asleep the night after his daylong automail surgery, Al sneaks outside to the Rockbells' backyard. He draws up a complex alchemic transmutation circle.

But he places nothing in the center… except himself.

Alphonse claps his hands together in a quick prayer, then, with a steely expression, touches his hands to the array.

The lines glow blue, like lightning, and then change into a bloody red. The Gate appears.

He stands up in Its presence. Alphonse clears his throat. "Take my right leg," he states firmly, "And in exchange, return my brother's right leg to him."

And how can The Gate resist such a tempting offer?

xXx

Edward wakes up with a start; he thinks that he heard someone scream.

"Al?" he calls out in fear, his voice rising. "Al!"

The blond jumps out of bed, his legs unstable and feeling strange. He races out into the crisp night, his eyes frantically scanning the scene. He runs around to the back of the house, and there, in the dirt, he finds his little brother… bent over, holding his upper thigh, and bleeding.

"Alphonse!" he shouts, and he's sure that he's woken up everybody else in the house. But he doesn't care. He runs to his brother's side, sliding on the dirt, and he brings the younger boy into his arms.

"Hey, Brother…" Al says weakly. There's an odd, light smile touching his lips. "Look, I fixed part of you…" And this is the final thing he says before he succumbs to unconsciousness. Before fainting, however, he stretches out a finger and points down at something,

Edward's gold eyes follow the motion. In the dim moonlight, near Al's fallen hand, is a flesh-and-bone leg where Ed's new automail should be. It's the same leg that Al is missing now, only it's the same skin tone as Ed's; it's returned to him from The Gate, no doubt in exchange for Al's own right leg.

Ed's eyes widen in shock and despair. "No, Al…" he chokes out, "Please… please tell me you didn't."

_Things have gone horribly wrong,_ Alphonse's thoughts swim in the darkness, _but at least I was able to give back part of what you gave up to save me._

xXx

"You know," he says a bit too merrily, "Automail isn't that bad. It's kind of cool." Alphonse lightly kicks his right leg into the air, admiring the metal it's constructed of.

Edward punches the younger boy in the arm, hard. "I can't believe you were so _stupid,_ Al! How could you sacrifice something like that? Why did you even do it?"

Al gives the older, angry-yet-worried boy a reassuring grin. "Because," he says softly, "I couldn't stand seeing you in pain, losing so much for me, while I watched away clean." He pauses and looks the other blond in the eye. "I love you, Brother, and I don't want you to carry all of the pain by yourself; it's my pain, too."

Ed hesitates; he hadn't expected to hear something like that, if he expected anything at all. He had wanted to blame Al's actions on something simple, like masochism, but now he sees that the true reason is not even close. He almost feels stupid himself, but he quickly shakes the feeling away. Town between reacting sentimentally or violently, he ends up doing both.

The older Elric punches his brother again, gentler this time, and tells Al kindly: "As much as I appreciate the sentiment, you can't do things like that, you idiot." He sighs. "Because… I love you, too, and I don't want you to have to carry any pain at all. I want to protect you; that's why I wanted to bring Mom back in the first place. It was for you, Al." He ruffles the other boy's short, sandy blond hair. "Let's make a pact, okay? We're never gong to do human transmutations ever again. We'll just keep on living and moving forward instead, and deal with what we've done."

"Yeah," Al agrees quietly as he rubs his sore arm and leans his head onto Ed's shoulder. "That would probably be best."


End file.
